Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 23 part 3/4

For from the time that man, having been set in honor, after he transgressed, was made like the beasts, he begets in like manner; yet there is not in him utterly extinguished a certain spark, as it were, of reason, in which he was made after the image of God. But if formation were not applied to this propagation, neither would it proceed into the forms and modes of its own kind. For if men had not come together, and God nonetheless willed to fill the lands with men, just as he created one without the intercourse of male and female, so could he create all; but those who come together cannot be begetting unless he creates. As therefore the Apostle says concerning spiritual instruction, by which man is formed to piety and righteousness:

'Neither he that plants is anything, nor he that waters, but God who gives the increase': so also here it may be said: 'Neither he that lies together nor he that sows is anything, but God who forms; nor is the mother who carries the conceived and nourishes the offspring anything, but God who gives the increase.' For he himself, by the operation with which he works until now, brings it about that seeds unfold their numbers and evolve from certain hidden and invisible wrappings into the visible forms of this beauty which we behold; he himself, coupling and connecting in wondrous ways the incorporeal and corporeal nature—the former set over, the latter made subject—makes a living being.

This work of his is so great and marvelous that it instills a stupor of mind and produces praise of the Creator in one who considers it well, not only in man—who is a rational animal and on this account more excellent and superior to all earthly living things—but in any tiny little fly whatever. He it is, therefore, who gave to the human soul a mind, in which reason and understanding are as it were lulled to sleep in the infant, as though they were nothing, to be awakened, of course, and drawn forth by the increase of age, whereby it may become capable of knowledge and doctrine and fit for the perception of truth and the love of the good;

by which capacity it may drink in wisdom and be endowed with the virtues, whereby it may prudently, bravely, temperately, and justly contend against errors and the other inborn vices, and overcome them by the desire of nothing but that highest and immutable Good. And even if it should not do this, how great a good, how marvelous a work of the Almighty is that very capacity for such goods, divinely established in the rational nature—who worthily can utter or conceive it?

For besides the arts of living well and of attaining to immortal felicity—which are called virtues, and are given only by the grace of God, which is in Christ, to the children of promise and of the kingdom—have not so many and so great arts been discovered and practiced by human genius, partly necessary, partly for pleasure, so that this so excellent force of mind and reason, even in those things which it seeks as superfluous, nay even dangerous and pernicious, may testify how great a good it has in its nature, whence it was able to invent, or learn, or practice these things? To what marvelous, what stupendous works of clothing and of building has human industry come; what progress it has made in agriculture, in navigation;

what it has devised and accomplished in the fashioning of vessels of every kind, or even in the variety of statues and paintings; what marvels for spectators, what incredible things to be done and displayed for those who hear, it has contrived in theaters; in capturing, killing, and taming irrational animals, what and how great things it has discovered; against men themselves so many kinds of poisons, so many of weapons, so many of engines; and for protecting and restoring mortal health, how many medicines and aids it has comprehended; for the pleasure of the palate, how many seasonings and incitements to gluttony it has discovered; for indicating and persuading thoughts, what a multitude and variety of signs, among which words and letters hold the chief place;

for delighting the mind, what ornaments of eloquence, what abundance of diverse songs; for soothing the ears, how many musical instruments, what modes of melody it has devised; how great a skill of measures and of numbers, and with what sagacity it has comprehended the courses and orders of the stars; with how great a knowledge of worldly things it has filled itself—who could tell it, especially if we should wish not to heap up all things in a mass, but to dwell upon them singly? Finally, in the very defense of errors and falsehoods, how great have shone the talents of philosophers and heretics—who would suffice to estimate it?

For we are now speaking of the nature of the human mind, by which this mortal life is adorned, not of faith and the way of truth, by which that immortal life is acquired. Since the Author of so great a nature is assuredly the true and supreme God, who administers all that he made and possesses supreme power and supreme justice, it would surely never have fallen into these miseries, nor from these would it have gone (save for those alone who shall be delivered) into eternal ones, unless a too great sin had gone before in the first man, from whom the rest have sprung. But now in the body itself—although it is common to us with the beasts in mortality, and is found weaker than many of them—how great is the goodness of God, how great the providence of so great a Creator that appears!

Are not the locations of the senses and the other members in it so arranged, and the very appearance and figure and stature of the whole body so modified, that it shows itself to have been made for the ministry of the rational soul? For man was not created bent toward the earth, as we see the animals devoid of reason to be; but the form of his body, erect toward heaven, admonishes him to relish the things that are above. Moreover, the marvelous mobility which has been assigned to the tongue and the hands—apt and suitable for speaking and writing and for accomplishing the works of very many arts and duties—does it not sufficiently show what kind of soul such a body has been joined to serve?

And yet, even apart from the necessities of working, the harmony of all the parts is so numerically ordered and beautiful, answering to itself in a fitting equality, that you would not know whether in its constitution more regard was had for usefulness than for beauty. For assuredly we see nothing created in the body for the sake of usefulness which has not also its place of beauty. And this would appear to us still more, if we knew the numbers of measures by which all things are connected and fitted together among themselves; which perhaps, in the things that stand out externally, human ingenuity might, with deliberate effort, trace out; but those which are hidden and removed from our sight—such as the great complexity of veins and nerves and inward organs, the secrets of the vital parts—no one can find out.

For although the diligence of physicians, whom they call anatomists, has cruelly mangled the bodies of the dead, or even, amid the hands of one cutting and searching the dying, and quite inhumanly probing into all things hidden in human flesh, has done so that it might learn what and how and in what places treatment should be applied: yet as for the numbers of which I speak, by which the fitting-together—which in Greek is called harmony (harmonia)—of the whole body, externally and internally, as of some instrument, consists, what shall I say? No one has been able to find these out, which no one has dared to seek.

But if these could be known, then even in the inner organs, which display no comeliness, the beauty of proportion would so delight us that it would be preferred, in the judgment of the mind itself which uses the eyes, above every apparent form which pleases the eyes. There are indeed certain things so placed in the body that they have only beauty and not also use; as the male breast has nipples, as the face has a beard, which the smooth faces of women show to be not for protection but for manly ornament, since they, being surely weaker, would more safely be protected. If therefore there is no member—among these visible ones, at least, whereof no one is in doubt—so accommodated to some work that it is not also comely; and there are moreover some whose only beauty and no use exists:

I think it is easily understood that in the making of the body, dignity was preferred to necessity. For necessity is indeed destined to pass away, and a time is to come when we shall enjoy one another by beauty alone, without any lust; which is especially to be referred to the praise of the Creator, to whom it is said in the psalm: 'You have put on confession and comeliness.' Now, as for the rest of the beauty and usefulness of the creation, which has been granted by divine bounty to man—though cast down and condemned into these labors and miseries—to behold and to take up, by what discourse can it be bounded?

in the manifold and varied beauty of heaven and earth and sea; in the very great abundance and so marvelous appearance of light itself; in the sun and moon and stars; in the shadows of the groves; in the colors and odors of flowers; in the diversity and multitude of chattering and painted birds; in the manifold appearance of so many and so great living creatures, of which those have more of wonder which are least in bulk (for we are more amazed at the works of ants and bees than at the immense bodies of whales); in the so grand spectacle of the sea itself, when it clothes itself as it were in garments of diverse colors, and now is green, and this in many ways, now purple, now blue.

And how delightfully is it beheld even whenever it is stirred up, and thence arises a greater pleasantness, because it so soothes the beholder that it does not toss and shake the voyager! What of the everywhere-abundance of foods against hunger? What of the diversity of flavors against loathing, poured forth by the riches of nature, not sought by the art and labor of cooks? What in so many things are the aids for guarding or recovering health! How grateful the alternation of day and night succeeding each other! How gentle the temperateness of the breezes! In shrubs and cattle, how great a supply of material for making garments! Who could recount all things?

But these things alone, which have been compressed by me as it were into a certain heap, if I should wish to unbind and shake out the bundles as if tied up, how great a delay would there be for me in the single items, in which very many things are contained! And all these are the solaces of the wretched and condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What then are those rewards, if these things are so many and such and so great? What will he give to those whom he has predestined to life, who has given these things even to those whom he has predestined to death? What good things will he make in that blessed life for the sake of him whom, in this wretched one, he willed his only-begotten Son to endure so great evils even unto death? Whence the Apostle, speaking of those very ones predestined to that kingdom:

'He that spared not,' he says, 'his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also with him freely given us all things?' When this promise shall be fulfilled, what shall we be! what kind shall we be! What good things are we to receive in that kingdom, seeing that, Christ dying for us, we have already received such a pledge! Of what kind will be the spirit of man, having no vice at all, neither one under which it may lie prostrate, nor one to which it may yield, nor one against which it may at least laudably contend, but perfected in most peaceful virtue! Of all things there how great, how splendid, how certain the knowledge, without any error or labor, where the wisdom of God shall be drunk from its very own fountain, with the highest felicity, without any difficulty!

Of what kind will be the body, which, in every way subject to the spirit and sufficiently vivified by it, will need no nourishments! For it will not be animal, but spiritual, having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any carnal corruption. But concerning the goods of the soul, which the most blessed man shall enjoy after this life, the noble philosophers do not dissent from us: concerning the resurrection of the flesh they contend, and deny it as much as they can. But many believing have left the deniers very few, and, converted with faithful heart to Christ—who showed in his own resurrection this which seems absurd to those men—both the learned and the unlearned, the wise of this world and the foolish.

For the world has believed this, which God foretold, who also foretold this, that the world would believe this thing. For he was not compelled, by any sorceries of Peter, to foretell so long beforehand these things, with the praise of the believers. For he is that God whom—as I have already said several times, nor does it irk me to remind—by the confession of Porphyry, who desires to prove it by the oracles of his own gods, the very divinities dread with horror; whom he so praised that he called him both God the Father and King. Far be it that those things which he foretold should be understood in the way in which these men wish—men who did not believe, together with the world, that which he foretold the world would believe.

For why not rather thus, just as the world was so long beforehand foretold as going to believe, and not as the very few chatter—who refused to believe, together with the world, this which the world was foretold to be going to believe? For if they say that these things are therefore to be believed in another way, lest, if they should say that vain things had been written, they do injury to that God to whom they bear so great a testimony: they surely do him as great, or even a graver injury, if they say the things are to be understood otherwise than as the world believed them—the world which he himself praised, himself promised, himself fulfilled as going to believe. For either he cannot bring it about that the flesh should rise again and live forever, or it is therefore not to be believed that he will do this because it is evil and unworthy of God?

But concerning his omnipotence, by which he does so many and so great incredible things, we have already said much. If they wish to find something which the Omnipotent cannot do, they have it outright, I will say: he cannot lie. Let us therefore believe what he can do, by not believing what he cannot do. Not therefore believing that he can lie, let them believe that he will do what he promised he would do; and let them so believe, as the world believed—the world which he foretold would believe, which he praised as going to believe, which he promised would believe, which he has already shown to have believed. But whence do they demonstrate this to be evil? There will be there no corruption, which is the evil of the body. Concerning the order of the elements we have already disputed; concerning the other conjectures of men we have said enough;

how great will be, in the incorruptible body, the ease of motion—from the temperament of present good health, which is in no way whatever to be compared to that immortality—we have, as I think, sufficiently shown in the thirteenth book. Let those read the earlier parts of this work who either have not read them or wish to recollect what they read. But Porphyry says, they object, that in order for the soul to be blessed, every body is to be fled. It profits nothing, therefore, that we have said the body will be incorruptible, if the soul will not be blessed unless it has fled every body. But already even from this point I have disputed as much as was fitting in the book mentioned; yet here I will recall from thence only one thing.

Let Plato, the master of all these men, emend his books and say that their gods, in order to be blessed, will flee their bodies, that is, will be about to die—the gods whom he said were enclosed in celestial bodies; to whom nevertheless God, by whom they were made, promised immortality—that is, eternal permanence in those same bodies—so that they might be able to be secure, their nature not having this of itself, but his counsel prevailing. Here he also overthrows that which they say, namely, that because it is impossible, therefore the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed. For most openly, according to the same philosopher, when God the unmade promised immortality to the gods made by himself, he said that he would do what is impossible. For thus Plato relates that he spoke:

'Since you have come into being,' he said, 'you cannot be immortal and indissoluble; yet you shall not be dissolved, nor shall any fates of death destroy you, nor shall they be stronger than my counsel, which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you are bound together.' If those who hear these things are not only absurd, but not deaf, they surely do not doubt that, according to Plato, that which is impossible was promised to the gods made by that God who made them. For he who says: 'You indeed cannot be immortal, but by my will you shall be immortal,' what else does he say than 'that which cannot come to be, you shall nevertheless be, by my doing'?

He, therefore, will raise up the flesh incorruptible, immortal, spiritual, who, according to Plato, promised that he would do that which is impossible. Why then do they still cry out that what God promised, what the world—which was itself also promised as going to believe—believed God who promises, is impossible, seeing that we cry out that God, who even according to Plato does the impossible, will do this? Not therefore, in order that souls may be blessed, is every body to be fled, but an incorruptible body is to be received. And in what body will they more fittingly rejoice, incorruptible, than in that in which, corruptible, they groaned? For thus there will not be in them that dire desire which Vergil placed from Plato, where he says:

'And again they begin to wish to return into bodies'; thus, I say, they will not have the desire of returning to bodies, since they will have with them the bodies into which they desire to return, and will so have them that they may never not have them, never at all lay them down, even for however small a time, by any death. Plato and Porphyry each said certain things which, if they had been able to communicate between themselves, they would perhaps have become Christians. Plato said that souls cannot be forever without bodies. For therefore he said that even the souls of the wise, after however long a time, would nevertheless return to bodies. But Porphyry said that the most purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, will never return to these evils of the world.

And through this, that which Plato saw to be true, if he had granted to Porphyry—that even the most purified souls of the just and wise would return to human bodies; and again, that which Porphyry saw to be true, if he had granted to Plato—that holy souls would never return to the miseries of a corruptible body; so that not each should say each single thing, but both, and each, should say both: I think that they would see it to be already consequent, that souls should both return to bodies, and receive such bodies as those in which they might live blessedly and immortally. For according to Plato, even holy souls will return to human bodies; according to Porphyry, holy souls will not return to the evils of this world. Let Porphyry therefore say with Plato: 'They will return to bodies';

let Plato say with Porphyry: 'They will not return to evils': and they will agree that souls return to those bodies in which they may suffer no evils. And these therefore will be none other than those which God promises, that blessed souls shall live forever with their own eternal flesh. For this, as far as I estimate, both would now easily concede to us, that they who confessed that the souls of the saints would return to immortal bodies would permit them to return to their own bodies, in which they endured the evils of this age, in which they piously and faithfully worshiped God, so that they might be freed from these evils.

Some of our own people, on account of a certain most illustrious kind of speaking and on account of certain things which he truly perceived, loving Plato, say that he perceived something like ourselves even concerning the resurrection of the dead. Which indeed Tully touches upon thus in his books On the Republic, that he wished to say Plato had rather sported than affirmed that this is true. For he introduces a man who had come back to life and narrated certain things which accorded with the Platonic disputations. Labeo too says that two men died on one day and met each other at a certain crossroads, and were then ordered to return to their bodies, and agreed among themselves that they would live as friends, and that so it came about, until they afterward died.

But these authors narrated that such a resurrection of the body took place as was that of those whom we know to have risen and to have been indeed restored to this life, but not in such a way that they would not die further. But Marcus Varro sets down something more marvelous in the books which he wrote On the Race of the Roman People, whose very words I thought should be set down. 'Certain astrologers,' he says, 'have written that there is in the reborn of men that which the Greeks call palingenesia;

by this they have written that it comes about in the number of four hundred and forty years, that the same body and the same soul, which had at some time been joined together in a man, should the same again return into conjunction.' This Varro indeed, or those astrologers I know not who (for he did not divulge the names of those whose opinion he recalled), said something which, although it is false (for when once the souls have returned to the same bodies which they bore, they are never afterward to leave them), nevertheless overturns and destroys many arguments of that impossibility with which these men chatter against us.

For those who hold this, or have held it, did not think it impossible that cadavers dissolved into the air, into dust, into ash, into moisture, into the bodies of feeding beasts or even of men themselves, should again return to that which they were.

Wherefore Plato and Porphyry, or rather whoever love them and are still living, if they agree with us that even holy souls will return to bodies, as Plato says, and yet will not return to any evils, as Porphyry says—so that from these there results the consequence which the Christian faith proclaims, that they will receive such bodies as those in which they may live happily forever without any evil—let them also take this from Varro, that they return to the same bodies in which they were before, and among them the whole question of the resurrection of the flesh unto eternity will be resolved.

Now let us see, as far as the Lord deigns to help, what the saints are to do in immortal and spiritual bodies, their flesh now living no longer carnally, but spiritually. And indeed of what kind that action—or rather that rest and repose—will be, if I should wish to speak the truth, I do not know. For I have never seen this through the senses of the body. But if I should say that I have seen it with the mind, that is, with the understanding, how great, or what, is our understanding compared to that excellence? For there is the peace of God, which, as the Apostle says, surpasses all understanding; whose, but ours, or perhaps also that of the holy angels? For not, indeed, that of God.

If therefore the saints are to live in the peace of God, assuredly they are to live in that peace which surpasses all understanding. That it surpasses ours, indeed, there is no doubt; but if it surpasses also that of the angels, so that he who says 'all understanding' seems not to have excepted even them: according to this we ought to take it as said, because the peace of God, by which God himself is at peace, as God knows it, we cannot so know it, nor can any angels. It surpasses therefore all understanding—no doubt, save his own. But because we too, according to our measure, having been made partakers of his peace, know the highest peace within us and among ourselves and with him, as far as is our highest: in this manner, according to their own measure, the holy angels know it;

Men, however, are now far below, however much they may excel in the advancement of the mind. For it must be considered how great a man it was who said: 'We know in part, and we prophesy in part, until that which is perfect shall come'; and: 'We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face.' Thus already the holy angels see, who have also been called our angels, because, delivered from the power of darkness and having received the pledge of the Spirit, we have begun to belong to the kingdom of Christ, to those angels with whom that City of God itself will be for us a holy and most sweet common possession, concerning which we have already written so many books. Thus, then, they are our angels who are the angels of God, just as Christ, who is God's Christ, is ours. They are God's, because they have not forsaken God;

they are ours, because they have begun to have us as their fellow citizens. And the Lord Jesus said: 'See that you despise not one of these little ones. For I say unto you, that their angels in heaven always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.' As therefore they see, so also shall we see; but we do not yet so see. Wherefore the Apostle says what I mentioned a little before: 'We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face.' As the reward of faith, therefore, this vision is reserved for us, of which the Apostle John also speaks: 'When he shall appear,' he says, 'we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.'

But the face of God is to be understood as his manifestation, not any such member as we have in the body and designate by that name. Wherefore, when it is asked of me what the saints shall do in that spiritual body, I do not say what I already see, but I say what I believe, according to that which I read in the Psalm: 'I believed, therefore have I spoken.' I say, then: They shall see God in that very body; but whether they shall see him through the body itself, as we now see the sun, moon, stars, sea and earth and the things that are in it through the body, is no small question. For it is hard to say that the saints shall then have such bodies that they cannot close and open their eyes when they will;

but it is harder to say that whoever shall have closed his eyes there shall not see God. For if the prophet Elisha, absent in body, saw his servant Gehazi receiving the gifts which Naaman the Syrian gave him—Naaman whom the said prophet had freed from the deformity of leprosy—which the wicked servant had thought he had done secretly, his master not seeing: how much more shall the saints in that spiritual body see all things, not only if they close their eyes, but even where they are absent in body! For then shall be perfect that of which the Apostle speaks: 'In part,' he says, 'we know, and in part we prophesy; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.'